Against the backdrop of the current COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing, working from home has become the new reality for many organizations. However, for some industries it’s not quite that simple. For broadcasters and media companies with complex media workflows, the shift to remote work requires access to low latency video feeds from outside production studios.
In addition to Haivision Makito X video encoders and decoders which are used extensively for field contribution, live interviews, and remote production, Haivision also has flexible solutions that enable broadcasters to securely monitor production, utility, and return feeds. Typically, these solutions are used behind corporate firewalls, but in light of recent events, more of our customers have been extending their workflows to larger numbers of at-home employees. Here are several ways our solutions are helping during this time.
Providing Secure Remote Access to Live Broadcast Feeds
With a focus on providing a service which people can turn to in times of crisis, newsroom operations are critical. In order to maintain the continuity and quality of service that viewers expect, we’re helping broadcasters with a number of measures to ensure that everyone in their organization from executives, talent, field reporters, social media teams, and broadcast engineers have full visibility of essential video content, in real-time, even when they’re not in the studio.
For news broadcasters these measures include:
Contribution from Home Offices
Equipping broadcast talent, including reporters, analysts, interviewers and expert interviewees, with their own low latency video encoders so that they can easily provide their feeds from home, rather than in a studio. Broadcast professionals can access and contribute content to studio workflows while maintaining security protocols and firewall policies using SRT AES encryption and media gateways.
Haivision solution components: Makito X4 Video Encoder, SRT Gateway
Secure Monitoring of Broadcast Feeds
Whether its contribution feeds, playout video, broadcast monitoring, competing channels, multi-viewers or teleprompters, we can help provide newsroom staff secure access to the same real-time content they would normally be able to see in their production facility from home, on a desktop or mobile device.
For secure viewing on a television, remote employees can also use a high-quality set-top box as a cost-effective and secure means of viewing live production feeds and channel lineups 24/7 using a remote control. Haivision set-top-boxes can also be managed and controlled centrally by an administrator.
Haivision solution components: Haivision Media Platform, Play 2000, SRT, Play Pro
Mobile Contribution
News happens fast and in cases when a camera crew can’t be deployed, Haivision technology enables reporters in the field to use their mobile devices as a camera to reliably feed video as an SRT stream using a standard internet connection over wifi, 4G or 5G networks.
Haivision solution components: Play Pro, SRT, Makito X video decoder, Haivision Media Platform
For post-production houses, we’re helping to:
Equip post-production professionals with video encoders, allowing them to securely continue their work at home (rather than in a studio) using a high-quality remote workflow that allows them to easily review and approve shots or cuts with collaborators or clients.
Haivision solution components: Makito X4 video encoder, Makito X video encoder, SRT, Makito X video decoder
Peace of Mind
The challenge for broadcasters is to implement not only a productive work from home solution but also one that’s secure and reliable. All our video solutions are powered by the Secure Reliable Transport protocol (SRT). With secure AES 128/256-bit encrypted streams and simplified firewall traversal, SRT is capable of delivering the best quality video over the worst networks.
For broadcasters with stringent firewall policies in place but who also want to continue working with people at home including freelancers and production partners, Haivision SRT Gateway provides an easy way to route live streams from one location to another, including to and from firewalls.
